Challenger site increases online portal market share

An online rental portal has reported strong traffic growth and increased its footprint to 80 per cent of national property listings.

An online rental portal has reported strong traffic growth and increased its footprint to 80 per cent of national property listings.

Rent.com.au achieved more than 610,000 unique visitors during February 2016, exceeding the company’s target while continuing to increase agent and landlord registrations.

Managing director Mark Woschnak said the February traffic results were in line with rent.com.au’s expectations and represents sustained growth over January on a per day basis.

“While strong unique visitor numbers are important and demonstrate an increase in the awareness of rent.com.au, we are pleased with the launch of the national sales team ahead of schedule and continued gains made in agent and non‐agent registrations during the month of February,” Mr Woschnak said.

“We now have an on the ground agent sales presence right across the country and we are set to benefit from this continued increase in agent registrations. In addition to that, we have also had our biggest month yet for landlord listings.”

The company also reported that it has more than 6,800 real estate agents registered on the website and has seen the highest number of new landlord listings in a month.

“With a business development manager and telesales team already focussed on the non‐agent market, rent.com.au achieved a new record of almost 1,300 new landlord listings in February,” Mr Woschnak said.

“Although this was still only a small proportion of the available market, it reflected increasing traction in the large, untapped non‐agent market in Australia.”

Mr Woschnak said the company’s ongoing growth will help attract a larger audience and provide greater benefits for users.

“Over the coming months we are focussing our resources on driving faster growth in agent and non‐agent registrations as we look to increase our overall level of listings content from the approximately 80 per cent of national property listings that we currently have onsite,” he said.

Rent.com.au said it will focus on growth in agent and non-agent registrations, as well as listings content and improvements for users.